Prof. Nancy Rosenberger
Nicola Boari
97075007-0
Codified Resistance and Self-Marginalized Youths:
domesticated and deviant behaviours in Japanese schools and families
Introduction and Background
With resistance and rebellious attitudes I refer to a specific type of actions
and behaviours expected by Japanese society from children in the stage of puberty
( shishunki), and which is commonly defined "hankoki", a passing phase on the path to
adulthood during which youths might deviate from their school and family duties, experience
worries ( nayami), but also intensely express their intellectual and physical potential and grow
to be responsible and reliable adults. Differently from other countries, puberty in Japan is
considered to be of shorted length, 3 and a half years for boys, 4 for girls, starting at about the
age of 11 and 12, and ending at 14 years old, which coincide with the 7th year of compulsory
school, and cessates with the 9th, the last one, and the most dramatic of all. It might extend to
the first year of high school, but its core develops during the middle school years, which is
regarded to be a very important transition phase in the life of Japanese students, but which
also reveals to be the most problematic and tense segment of the school system. Japanese
youths are expected to mature much earlier and faster then their Western contemporaries,
and the weight of responsibilities placed on them is far heavier. The diffuse time and
indulgence adolescence is given in Western countries has no correspondence in the
Japanese side, and this is due to a multiplicity of different factors and cultural views which I
will later try to mention. Japanese teachers and families consider puberty as an "upwelling of
energy" (Letendre, pp.64), but also as a "test of will" (Letendre, pp.75), and despite the fact
that they are conscious of the upsurgence of interest in the opposite sex (ishiki ) experienced
by children, they are not at all concerned with the "raging hormones" and consequent possible
sexual deprevation Western youth is supposed to suffer from. Uncontrollable sexual attraction
is confined to students with problematic family backgrounds, or to those affected with severe
mental disorders ( seishin ), but sexuality is not censored or veiled in any way by Japanese
teachers, as long as it is kept controlled and experienced at mature age.
The reason why I have many times referred to middle school students as still "children",
despite they would reasonably belong to the adolescence stage, is that families and teachers
themselves call them this way ( kodomo ), and expect them to be innocent (junsui), obedient
( sunao ), and compliant ( otonashi), till the age of 18, or at least until the end of compulsory
education (the 9th year). The phase of puberty is considered as a positive fragment of their
lives, bright ( akarui ) and fun (tanoshii ), and the teachers, especially the homeroom one,
take full responsibility of their growth, guiding them to a serene and healthy adulthood and
showing themselves as affectionate and caring models, expecting from students the same
mutual trust they feel, resulting from following the normative ideal of the "chugakusei-rashii"
behaviour. Students are presented with this image on a daily basis, and it is everywhere
reflected, in the school environment as in society as a whole. They should internalize the
school norms and rules ( kosoku ), realize the importance of study from the very first steps of
their careers as students, have a bright personality, and always have a goal in life, a strong will
to succeed and fulfill their dreams and hopes for the future. Teachers belive they understand
(rikai ) all this, and do their best in order to escort them towards continuous achievements,
and emphasize how lifestyle and basic daily habits ( kihontekina seikatsu shOkan ) determine
both academic and existential success. "Lifestyle is the outward manifestation of
socio-emotional adjustment" ( Fukuzawa, pp.74), and the cooperation between school
and families is strongly consolidated, working in close ties towards the molding of students'
lives and personalities in the way they consider best. Success of the child seems to be
everybody's shared goal, but what if these same children are not comfortable with what society
presents and expects them to follow, if refusal is shown or denial actively inacted?
The hankoki phase teachers so positively expect to deal with, control, and turn to the
shakajin's ( social citizens ) behavioural side, can also express itself in much more disruptive
and resolute ways, and lead to open rebellion and violence, and the Ministry of Education,
family and teachers' goals to "aid human development", "help students discover themselves
as fully realized human beings" may not correspond to the actual individuals'. Following
Bordieu's "cultural economy" theory, the subcultures generated by estranged elements
operate as "shadow cultural economies"..."providing individuals who lack official culture capital
and social status", and what is generally regarded as "deviance" is "rule violation only in the
limited sense that it involves violating the rules of relatively large minorities or majorities who
are powerful, well-organized and highly fearful of individuals or loosely organized or small
groups who lack power" ( Lofland, 1969 ).
"The violation of rules and rebellion against adult society are not seen as unavoidable or
legitimate by-products of adolescence, and the setting of alternative rules in subcultures is not
condoned" ( Metzler, 1989 ).
For those who exit the positive hankoki way of enfolding youth resistance, no other place in
society is available, expulsion is the only answer for any attempt to rediscuss the set of implicit
and explicit norms structure has given itself. Control theory states that without social
integration, the individual automatically tends to deviate from the conforming behaviour, the
direction to which is identified by Hirsch with four kinds of social bonds:
- attachment, to meaningful people;
- commitment, to conventional goal;
- involvement, in conventional activities;
- belief, in socially accepted rules.
Lacking these bonds, socialization is invalidated, and in a society like Japan, where the
"group-model" has been much emphasized and discussed, assuming "that people prefer to
act within the framework of a group and that such a group will be hierarchically organized and
run by a paternalistic leader" ( Moeran, pp.64 ), the individual is likely to be isolated.
The definition of what deviant behaviour is, is strictly given and understood, although space for
negotiation and reassesment of one's position among the others is possible, but hardly when
confronting the firm powers that control society. According to Durkheim, education itself is "an
organized methodological socialization, and is a mean of maintaining and reproducing the
moral order of society" ( Fujita, pp. 143 ), its major goal is nurturing conforming and orderly
behaviour in the offspring, its dynamics the same as those of competing social groups,
expressing specific socioeconomic and cultural changes and needs, and fulfilling the interests
of the ruling class.
Toyama-Bialke reports Hess and Azuma's ( 1991 ) distinguishing of two models through
which cultural transmission takes place, the second of which seems prevalent in Japan:
- teaching, which involves dialogue, explanation and direct confronting;
- osmosis, a close process of interdependence and nurturing which exposes youth to the
adult's values and "instills the will and readiness to imitate, accept and internalize them" (
Toyama-Bialke, pp. 23 ).
This process is developed from child's early age, creating a strong emotional
bond between mothers and children, by continuous physical contact, indulgence towards child's
behaviour, and a dramatic sense of interdependence. This same rearing pattern is reflected in
many other fields of socialization, such as school, extracurricular activities, work, and also in
nationalist propaganda which stresses on Japan's image as a community of equals working
towards the same direction, the welfare of all and the maintaining of a strong national identity.
Human relations are empathic, interactions are conducted with strong caring for the other's
feelings, receptions and expectations.
"Members of a group are expected to conform and cooperate with each other, thus
emphasizing harmony and and behaviour tends to be ritualized and formal in order to reduce
or eliminate the surgence of conflict or embarassment. Ideally, members are supposed to
subordinate individual interests to group goals and remain loyal to its causes, and in return,
the leader treats his followers with benevolence and magnaminity. ( Befu, 1980 ).
Leaders though do not necessarily care about the subordinates' welfare, and the
subordinates don't always accept loyalty and exploitation. The "giri" ( socially contracted
dependence ) and "ninjo" ( spontaneous feelings ) whose combination is supposed to
permeate all relationships in Japanese society, and which together create " on" (indebtness
and obligations ), are not actually reflected in everyday lives and personal decisions, and the
abhorred West-induced-thought-to-be individualism ( kojinshugi ) has a strong part in the self-
structuring of individuals' life-cartographies.
The demanded acceptance of one's social role and requirements adherence to heavy
burdens of responsibility, is expected to be incorporated right from the middle school period,
when the difficult examinations required to pass on to an acclaimed high school ("hensachi",
high school rating system ), which will itself be the sure ground to highly regarded universities'
entrance, begin. Self-awareness here signifies social conformity
and neglection of one's own dreams at the age of 14 or even earlier, when the preparations
for "examination hell" will be conducted in cram-schools (juku ), which may themselves
require subsequent entrance examinations. The self has to be projected towards a distant
future at a stage of life, puberty, which itself usually sees nothing else than the present.
Stress, which has been recalled many times as a satisfactory explanation of "school
incidents" in the various "kodomo ga abunai" ( children in crisis ) and "seishonen mondai" (
youth problems ) media reportages, is not sufficient for society to excuse itself. As Taki
explains, stress is the most common factor for explaining any sort of problem behaviour, since
it is involved in all the much regarded personal interactions, but a closer look on society's
onthology itself is required.
"Personal development in Japan is a progression through a number of predetermined social
roles, it establishes strong expectations of age-appropriate behaviour along a predetermined
developmental path... Teachers guide students towards what they consider morality...
Gradually the child moves from a free, unrestrained existence toward one increasingly defined
by social demands. Maturity is the ability to fully adopt to outside social realities and
responsabilities that lead not to self-negation or conformity in the Japanese view, but to
personal fulfillment." ( Fukuzawa, pp.84 ).
The place for the individual's realm of action and responsibility is very limited, and a sense of
multidimensionality for one's own "ikigai" ("that which most makes life worth living", Mathews,
1996 ) is also greatly diminished.
The mainstream consciousness ( churyo ishiki) also expresses itself through the myth of
Japan as a fully meritocratic society ( gakureki shakai ), for which everybody is given the same
opportunities and the individual's social position therefore results from fair competition.
Everyone can succeed, and winners and losers are justified and treated as a natural
consequence of one's own will-power, but it still fails to explain the economically unaffordable
top-level high schools' tuitions which basically deny any chance for students from
lower classes. It is infact the end of middle school, (the end of compulsory
schooling ), which seems to be the decisive point in the reproduction of poverty and detached
human development. Those who won't be able to afford studying will be left behind and inherit
their families' socioeconomic conditions, aimlessly floating in a self-replicating cycle of poverty
and marginality. For many, the upward social mobility promised by the mainstream is just not
reachable from the beginning, and although their relatives may honestly wish for a better
education and future for them, it is what Bordieu defined as "culture capital" that is mostly
lacking.
As the definition of deviancy is given by the ruling powers to what they regard as not conform
to themselves, the same can be said of those "losers" which could not live up to society's
expectations. Not all of these children will attend correspondence schools (tsushinsei kdko ),
some will become rebellious following a "bad behaviour" (furybkoi), be absent from school
(futoku ), commit general status offenses ( guhan ) such as hanging around with friends,
looking at pornography, sniffing glue and be addicted to pachinko, get into fights or bullying
(ijime ), but what is sure is that their privileged families' counterparts will "affectively use
schooling to maintain the privileges they already possess" ( Okano & Tsuchiya ).
What is mostly missing from the mediatic debates over youth deviancy and delinquency that
have overfloated since the 1990s, is a class reconsideration of Japanese society.
Medias have already excessively covered stories about social-reconstruction such as "furitaa"
( or "shinsotsu mushoku", recent graduates with no jobs ), freeters engaging in casual work
and not committing to any stable job ( or company ); "parasite singles" who still live with
parents and receive financial support from them; and the decay of social competence, all the
former demonstrating the young people's detachment from the traditionally conceived order
and values of Japanese society. Moral panics ( definition introduced by Stanley Cohen ) have
also been spurred in relation to various horrible cases involving extreme violence committed
by youths. But what has not been discussed is hidden inside the core of society itself, the
social segregation acted towards wide segments of population because of their lower class (
and cast and racial) status.
The hankoki phase of resistance might be applied to adolescents in general indeed, but
deeper problems such as class vulnerability and discrimination cannot be disregarded.
"Poverty facilitates divorce, stress, health problems, a variety of illnesses and even early
deaths in an unbroken cycle, which is most certainly not due to a lack of family values and
much less of personality/character flaws, but is based on a clear pattern of structural
violence." ( Farmer, 2003, in Aoki & McDowell Aoki, 2005 ).
With the following points I will try to briefly discuss some of the several aspects involved in the
issue.
Education
Japanese middle schools publicly aim at the "development of the whole person", providing
several non-academic activities, such as events and student-clubs, and "shido", different fields
of instruction, which consist in academic, moral, health, occupational and counseling,
instruction. The regular nine subjects though dominate the school day anyway, and teachers
are required to strictly adhere to the Ministry of Education's approved texts and programs,
which basically leaves no time for anything else. Classes are mostly text-centered, discussion
is lacking, and the constant rush to fill students with facts necessary for the final examinations,
tangible. The holistic approach stated in schools' general intentions fails to be followed, and
learning mechanisms also fail to be differentiated. Students with different learning pace are
required to make up for themselves, commonly through juku schools, or otherwise rely on
peers' help, or just stay behind.
School discipline is strict, although distributed and acted in a more codified and informal rather
than an openly stated way: besides the strong regulations concerning students' appearances,
teachers prefer to leave children responsible for themselves and for class' conduct, believing in
students' own sense of responsibility and self-monitoring. Large work-groups ( shudan
seikatsu ) are formed and will be likely to remain the same for the entire school time, giving
this way the responsibility to manage and balance the different abilities and personalities to
students themselves. Club activities and sport events ( gyoji) further encourage social
competence and harmony, and everyday interactions serve as a way to internalize rules and
discipline. Control therefore doesn't necessarily come from school institution and family
only, but from and within the group itself, which more or less consciously provides social,
structural, general and specific/situational monitoring.
A closer look on students' lives is also carried out by "lifestyle guidance" ( seikatsu shido ), a
set of disciplinary practices offering teachers a complete understanding of their in and
outside school behaviour. Families are involved too, by both being provided constant updates
on school norms and children's conduct, but also by being objects of investigations and visits.
Teachers assure themselves by believing more or less hypocritically in the strong and warm
relationships established with students, demanding only the “truth” from them. This truth is
exhorted through regular surveys, reflection essays ( hanseibun ), and "daily life notebooks"
( seikatsu noto ), which are also read aloud during class among students. This counseling
exercise should help students to think about their lives and misdeeds, and since
disobedience is regarded as a betrayal of teachers' trust, they should repent and confess
open-heartedly.
"The group format also invites peer participation in the process of social control. Opening
oneself leads not only to close interpersonal relationships, but to the discipline and scrutinity of
society - in this case, one's classmates." ( Fukuzawa, pp. 72 ).
Teachers' visits to students' houses are very important in monitoring pupils' lives, and just
from a few glimpses and details they are sure to be able to understand various implications
and facts. Teachers, which are mostly from middle-class environments, often tend to be
discriminatory against lower-class backgrounds, or "unusual" family situations. Single mothers
are assumed to neglect their offspring since they are busy with work, families with chronically
ill or disabled members, children in "yogoshisetsu" ( protective institutions for children ), and
also minorities, are expected to foster students whose academic achievements will be little,
eventually adopt problematic behaviour, or just drop out.
Moral education was made compulsory since 1962, in the form of "Dotoku" ("path to
goodness, virtue, responsibility"), and the rhetorically democratic influence of the American
occupation is hard to miss. They emphasize the courage of the individual to stand for his
own opinions if he thinks what he's doing is the morally just, and also focus on "gaman",
perseverance and patience in face of adversities. Although they highly regard the student's
individual opinion and identity, and state that peer pressure should be less influential, not
much of these advices are seen in Japanese schools, and the "morally just position" seems
more or less the group's one.
Teachers usually tend to avoid interacting with disruptive class elements, and encourage
classmates to take care of and solve the problem by themselves. This attitude reminds me of
Japanese mothers' behaviour with children, avoiding open conflict and silently inducing guilt in
them for having broken their empathic interdependent relationship.
Family
Much has been said about the disintegration of Japanese families, the general loss of values
and other discomforting arguments. Conservatives cry out against spoiled postwar parents
growing even more spoiled and selfish children.
Recent bullying and violence cases have again created an overflow of moralistic attitudes
among public opinion, and family and school have once again been the major targets for
harsh criticism.
Even though statistics clearly demonstrate the overestimation of youth violence and deviance
in Japan 8 Gesine Foljanty-Jost, 2003 ), which still is a much more contained phenomenon in
comparison with most other countries, some reflections on family dynamics and their effects on
the subject can be helpful.
The current image of middle class families involves a housewife mother, and an overly
busy, and absent, father. The move to the nuclear family system eliminated the presence in
the same household of different generations, which in the past served as both mother and
father examples for the children. Parents now rely much more on school, an extension of
family for children, which spend most of the day, and of the week, engaged in school
and extracurricular activities. They are almost completely relieved of all housework, which is
taken care by mothers, since their duty is to study hard and to create a future for themselves
just like their fathers did. Parents are often overly concerned about their education, but also
with "space", with the more or less informal networks of relationships entertained within
school, friends, neighbourhood and so on.
As Ruth Benedict ( 1946 ) notes, "the arc of life in Japan is plotted in opposite fashion to that
of the U.S. It is a great U-curve with maximum freedom and indulgence allowed to babies and
to the old. Restrictions are slowly increased after babyhood till having one's own way reaches
a low just before and after marriage."
Children grow a very special and close bond with their mothers lasting at least until the first
years of schooling, and mutual dependency is accepted and institutionalized. Mothers'
dedication is absolute, and they tend to overly excuse children, but at the same time expect
much from them, and failure to live up to their wishes causes strong guilt. As wives,
Japanese women tend to take responsibility of their husband's behaviour, and the same with
children's, but the quiet suffering and self-sacrifice endured demands some kind of
recompense in the future.
Kawai's analysis of home violence perpetrated by children ( 1980 ), underlines the
conflicting principles in Japanese families, and the effects on child bearing and aggressiveness.
While the maternal principle tends to contain and permit everything the child does except the
abandonment of mother's side, the father one should instead instill clear distinctions between
what is right and wrong, and put strong value on the establishment of the child's personality.
The absence of fathers though, the lack of punishment and of his firm figure, develops anger
and frustration in children who cannot free themselves from the maternal tie, and toil on their way
to achieve self-dependence and identity.
Home violence is directed towards all members of the family, but especially to mothers, as if
following an unconscious impulse to hurt the object of their love, and at the same time
exposing their frustration for the inability to express a long-matured oppressive feeling of guilt
and worthlessness.
"Japanese perception of social expectations concerning achievement behaviour and
marriage choice... gives ample evidence of the presence of guilt... Nullification of parental
expectations is some way to hurt a parent... Guilt is essentially related either to an impulse to
hurt, which may be implied in a contemplated act, or the realization of having injured a love
object toward whom one feels some degree of unconscious hostility." ( De Vos, 1960, pp. 83-
84 ).
Refusal to repentance and atonement might lead to violence or self-alienation from family
relationships, but also a hidden desire to be punished for one's own misbehaviour might be a
reason. The mere fun of pursuing deviancy should also be considered, but before leaving the
family environment, I would like to discuss one last factor.
Amae
Takeo Doi defines "amae" as "a key concept for understanding Japanese personality
structure" ( 1962 ), but also points out how it cannot be considered uniquely Japanese, since
Western psychology also contemplates the similar concept of "passive love". What can
instead be considered as unique here, is the social and institutional recognition which it holds
in Japanese identity.
The term is the nominalization of the verb "amaeru", which means "to depend and to
presume upon another's benevolence", but it also is related to the adjective "amai", sweet,
adding a distinct feeling of sweetness in both child and husband's attitude towards mother and
wife. The other side of this sweetness is though a mutually accepted master and slave
relationship, which can be attributed to both adults and children. It basically defines the
demanding of love by a subject which is sure to receive, even if by force, what he wants from
an objectified and passive source of relentless care and attention. It is the desire to be loved
pursued by dictatorial means, and its ramifications and variations are so many, and so clearly
defined in Japanese psychology, that its implications can be drawn in a multitude of situations.
Doi underlines various definitions of patients suffering from "shinkeishitsu" ( a
Japanese diagnostic term in psychiatry covering neurasthenia, anxiety neurosis and obsessive
neurosis ), such as: "kodawari", the state resulting from an unsatisfied desire to ameru;
"sumanai", a guilt feeling which itself tends to create guilt in others, forcing them to offer them
benevolence; "suneru", for the child who keeps a grudge because he feels he wasn't able to
amaeru as much as he wanted to; "hinekureru", behaviours that seek devious ways to deny
the wish to amaeru.
If the husband's amaeru can be expressed, and is accepted, through the "teishu kampaku" (
petty tyrant), mistreating his wife and by this expressing his will to be served and loved, the
same could be applied for children rebelling against family and school, or assailing others in
order to gain attention and maybe a glimpse of short-lasting notoriety. In a society that
hardly accords any distinction between children and adults though, it could also represent the
desperate cry of a youth whose identity as single and independent human beings is denied,
and only by embracing absolute acts can find a way to exist.
Inequality
Japan's mainstream dream is still far from becoming reality: working class still is the
majority of the population, more than half of which is constituted by women. Parental financial
instability is one of the causes for students dropping out of school ( ochikobore ), and
monetary insecurity is reflected in all aspects of their lives. The desires they are denied, the
mobility they are restricted, the knowledge they did not inherit ( Bordieu's "culture capital"
theory ) from families, and that they will strive for against all the obstacles they will be facing,
places these lower-class children in powerless positions right from birth. They are those
who will probably be defined as "chusotsu burabura zoku" ( unemployed and unemployable
middle school children ), and "dame ningen" ("dead pigeons", disfunctional youth with no aim
whatsoever in life ), and that are expected to leave home at early age, marry too early, and
become delinquent and end up in juvenile training schools.
Teachers are ready to come to easy conclusions when dealing with them and their families,
immediately recognizing pre-delinquent behaviours, such as smoking, drinking, unhealthy
sexual conduct, and labeling them as failures. Restrained from higher academic achievements,
incapable of entering expensive private schools and even cram schools, they will just attend
the closest school available in their popular district, isolated from the middle class institutes.
Crammed up together, they will likely incorporate the same attitudes, form delinquent
groups, share their fathers' infatuation with alcool and domestic violence, and probably
become day labourers ( hiyatoi rodosha ) and then just "evaporate". Rebellious and apathetic
( mukiryoku ), society won't offer them anything else then invisibility and segregation.
The government itself helps the phenomenon's self-replication; for example, by facilitating the
lack of accumulation of financial assets for the poorest families under "seikatsuhogo"
( government living protection allowances ), expecting single mothers to receive help from
their own families, regardless of the availability of such help. The Ministry of Health, Labor and
Welfare's Public Policy Announcement No.102, March 19, 2003, clearly unfolds its policies:
"Regarding single mother-families, we have to reconsider policies centered on child-rearing
allowances, and place the main emphasis on welfare services, which support and promote the
independence of single mothers through work."
Conclusion
While lower class children are forcibly marginalized by dominating powers, youths also do
also seek self-marginalization by defining themselves within a conflicting identities framework.
New groups, new subcultures ( not anymore the motorcycle gangs ( bosozoku ) or
leftist activists of the 1960s and 70s) are to be created and are currently being formed and
continuously redefined.
What Japanese Law and medias prefer to consider as "kireru" (juveniles that become violent
without clear motivations ), is on the contrary a strong symptom of an occurring change within
society as a whole, as its views, aspirations, expectations and values are being rediscussed
and manipulated.
Deviancy is never di per se, since it's defined by what society regards as deviant, and both
conformity and self-definition will always be pursued, confront and struggle against each other.
Juvenile delinquency in Japan is not a rising problem, and it statistically decreases with
increasing age of the offendors. Serious crimes committed by youth are almost insignificant,
and the attention given to them by mass-medias does not absolutely correspond to the real
image.
The reason why I personally defined the hankoki period as a "codified resistance" and
"domesticated behaviour", is that it underestimates the power and urgency of expression and
freedom of youth, and channels this flow of potentially dangerous energy into controllable and
institutionalized mechanism of explanation and repression. Hankoki just doesn't seem to me
to be designed to face concrete rebellion and exposure to the seifs truth. It's manifestations
cannot be defined as deviant, but only as repressed instances of a silenced youth.
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